An exhibition by Martinican artist Chantal Charron — “Surécriture”—is on view through October 27, 2024, at Fondation Clément, Martinique. Charron describes her work as follows:
« L’être est, parce qu’il est, …et ainsi à l’infini … » [“Being is, because it is, …and so on to infinity…”]
Jean Jaurès, De la réalité du monde sensible. Œuvres philosophiques, Alcan, 1891.
“It is this dimension of being in its depth, its dignity, its anchoring to the world, in search of itself, that this new pictorial and graphic series Surécriture questions.
It is therefore a question of trying to write… differently…
A new definition of writing (in the formal sense) is initiated here… A writing that wants to be beyond the emergence of the sign, beyond the idea of inventing an alphabet of signs: of silhouette-signs, of figure-signs, of sketched silhouettes, of refined signs… hieratic, erected, in motion or in repose.
I propose a shift towards a practice of otherness, towards joint creations, shared spaces of inscriptions, marks, traces, signatures, characters… A cohabitation at the same time, in fusion and in tension, to jointly attempt to “write” a presence.
It is the authentic Bogolan from Mali and Burkina Faso, a natural textile in dyed printed cotton, artisanal and traditional…, that I favor as a material, aesthetic and symbolic support to make it a space of connivance, processes and procedures, thus deploying the act of creation.
Here, there is not an act of reappropriation of a cultural material, of a matri- or patrimonial heritage that is played out, but rather, naturally…, just as these cotton threads connecting each weft of fabric between them, each strip gathered to form what makes it the fabric, there is an act of relay, of unifying relay where the act itself becomes a transmitter and amplifier of what humanity carries in its extent as a free presence, as an active essence, as a being for itself, in the emergence of its own poetics.”
Text translated by Ivette Romero. For original essay and more information on the exhibition, see https://www.fondation-clement.org/expositions/surecriture/
Also see https://www.madinin-art.net/surecriture-exposition-de-chantal-charron-jusquau-27-octobre-a-la-fondation-clement/
For more on the artist, see https://matrimoine.art/bio/chantal-charron/